Patients often require a medication prescription that changes over time in dose and/or frequency of administration, i.e., a medication taper. Medication tapers having an increasing or decreasing dose or frequency of administration are beneficial in many circumstances. A decreasing dose or frequency of administration may be beneficial, for example, in instances where a medication must act quickly to combat a specific condition. After the initial higher dose, however, a reduced medication dose or frequency of administration may achieve the desired medical result. Accordingly, a medication taper is desirable to minimize the amount of medication administered to the patient and, yet, maintain effectiveness. In such an instance, the medication taper achieves the desired medical result while it decreases the side effects associated with the medication, the medication expenses, and the amount of medication entering the patient's system.
On the other hand, an increasing dose or frequency of administration may be beneficial, for example, in instances where a medication becomes ineffective at a specific dose or frequency of administration. In such an instance, after the initial administration(s) of a medication, only an increased medication dose or frequency of administration may achieve the desired medical result. Accordingly, a medication taper is desirable to maintain the medication's effectiveness without incurring unnecessary side effects associated with the medication, medication expenses, and amounts of medication entering the patient's system during the initial administration(s) of the medication.
Although medication tapers are oftentimes beneficial, preparing and managing medication tapers is an error-prone and time-consuming practice for clinicians. A clinician preparing a hand-written medication taper is generally required to perform calculations and record various details pertaining to each dosage of the medication taper. Further, although management information systems have played a role in improving the practice of prescribing medications, the clinician may still be required to perform calculations and to input separately each dose of the medication taper in preparing a medication taper. In either case, the opportunity for error is prevalent both in making medication taper calculations and in the potential for inputting or recording duplicative information.
Similarly, managing a medication taper, either by hand-written prescription management or computerized prescription management, also may result in errors and/or inefficiencies. For example, to modify a medication taper, each medication dosage of the medication taper may need to be modified individually. As such, not only is duplicative work by a clinician likely, prescription errors may result if all dosages of the medication taper are not similarly modified.